


We All Fall Down

by youheldyourbreath



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 00:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10910637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: Selina Kyle is dead. And the clone is to blame. The Batman is born on a snowy mountain top in god know's where and he has returned to Gotham to avenge her. The Court's time is up.





	We All Fall Down

Selina was dead.

Alfred did not tell him lightly. And Bruce felt his entire world drop out from underneath his feet. He had been swept up into the Court of Owls plot and then adopted by the League of Assassins. For the first time he had felt himself clawing his way out of the fifth of the alley that took his parents. 

And suddenly, the day he had returned, his world was a dark pit of agony again. His clone, the other Bruce had been discovered by Alfred. His butler explained that the clone had broken the facade days after he had murdered Selina. There was a crack and with one final push he was admitting everything.

Alfred said he tried to subdue the clone but he had been too strong and had escaped. He had not seen the clone since. But Alfred knew for certain Selina had been killed. Unceremoniously pushed out of a window. 

The butler helped stabilize Bruce as he staggered back into his seat. 

He could not help but think of the last words she had said to him and how, apparently, she had died defending him. 

Another light in his life had gone out.

He didn't even realize he was crying until he was sobbing ugly, loud tears. His back shook and Alfred supported him, his arms firm around his ward's shoulders. 

"You're lying," Bruce demanded naively. "She's not dead."

Alfred patiently nodded, "She is, sir. I'm so sorry."

Bruce hid his face in the hands he had not yet grown into, "No. You're a liar. She can't be dead. Not when I didn't tell her, Alfred." His voice was wrecked, "I didn't tell her."

"She knew," Alfred insisted fiercely, "She knew, Master B."

It was a long time before Bruce had cried himself exhausted. When that time came everything in him was hallow. Ra's al Ghul had taught him many things but chiefly he had shown him how to leave the boy behind and become the man Gotham needed.

The boy Bruce was devastated. The man felt nothing but an empty pit where Selina used to occupy his heart.

Once he was the shell of the boy's sorrow, the man stood free of his butler's embrace. "Where is her body?"

Alfred said carefully, "There was no body. The Court must've gotten to her before the GCPD could find her."

Bruce reached for his jacket and shrugged it on, "I'll be back later."

"No," Alfred demanded, "I've just gotten you back. You're out of your head if you think you're gonna run off again."

"I'm getting her body back," Bruce said harshly. 

"But-"

"I'm getting her body back so I can put her to rest, Alfred. She deserves at least that."

Alfred did not say anything. Bruce thought that maybe he couldn't say much. He would never understand Selina and Alfred's relationship. For two people that both cared so deeply for him it was a wonder they could never find their footing to see eye to eye. And now, Bruce had a treacherous thought, they would never have the chance to explore finding common ground. 

She was dead and the Court had her body. 

Bruce gave one fleeting glance at his friend and stepped into his car, the one he barely knew how to drive. It was a ghoulish thing of wealth but if he wanted the Court to find him he had to be conspicuous. 

He swerved the car left and right, narrowly missing the other cars on the road. Whatever incarnation of man Bruce was now was the kind that was reckless and lived for his money. Bruce didn't care what the people of Gotham thought of him. He would be whatever kind of careless wealthy playboy they needed him to be so long as he got the Court's attention.

Bruce sped past a police car and the sirens went over. He glanced at his speed and saw it was way over the limit. The Wayne boy smiled and drove his car faster and faster. One police car followed him, then two, then three. He was running on fumes of adrenaline. 

In another life, he could have almost seen Selina hanging her head outside the car window and shouting gleefully to the sky. Wild abandon was her forte, Bruce had always been too calculated for that sort of freedom. 

Locked in his day dream, Bruce didn't notice the cop car make a hard left in front of them. He panicked and slammed on his breaks, the jerk send his head forward and he hit his forehead hard on the steering wheel. When his car came to sudden stop inches from the other car, Bruce blearily blinked up and saw Gordon climbing out of the car. 

Bruce touched his forehead and his fingers brought back wet, sticky blood. Gordon wretched his car door open and bottled his clearly concealed rage, "What were you thinking?"

"The Court," Bruce croaked, and then he slipped into darkness. 

When he awoke he was sitting upright in a chair in a conference room he had seen so many months ago. A sea of masked faces watched his with a patience that would have unnerved the boy, it only served to anger the man. 

"Mr. Wayne," Catherine addressed him, "We see you've returned."

Bruce touched his forehead and felt a bandage covering his wound. Someone must have attended to it while he slept. "I don't have time for pleasantries. Where is she?"

The silence in the room grew stiff. Bruce asked again, "Where is she, Catherine? I want to see her body."

Bruce's eyes scanned the crowd for any sign of treachery in the Owl masks. One set of eyes stood out among the rest: Gordon. 

He could not think or even consider what that meant. Every conversation, every single thing Bruce had ever told the cop in confidence was now under scrutiny in his head. How long had he been spying on Bruce for the Court?

His even gaze remained on Gordon who had the good grace to look away in what Bruce hoped was shame.

"Bruce, I regret to say I have no idea who you're talking about," Catherine chirped. 

Bruce stood definitely from his chair, "Selina Kyle. I know my clone killed her. And I want her body back."

 

Gordon's eyes snapped to his leader's, "Selina Kyle is dead?"

Catherine sat taller, "I'm afraid we don't have her. The clone acted alone. I wasn't aware of her disappearance until just now."

Bruce's eyes narrowed, "Not disappearance. Murder."

"That's why you've come?" Her voice was calm. "To avenge a dead girl? Did you learn nothing while you were away?"

Bruce's hands itched for his staffs, the ones Ra's had taught him to wield without hesitation. He remembered every lesson. The League of Assassins did not bargain for information, they took it. 

His hands grabbed the vase on the table and smashed the glass. His hands were bloody with cuts but he focused on his mission, not the pain. There was no pain, only Justice for Selina. 

The shattered glass was now a knife and he sent it soaring like an arrow into Catherine's shoulder. She screamed in pain and the entire table reached for some concealed weapon. 

Bruce wiped his bloody hand on his trousers, "Where is her body?"

"We don't have her, Bruce," Gordon finally spoke. 

The tension in the room narrowed into the space between Bruce and Gordon. The other members stayed ready to attack but Bruce's eyes were locked to Gordon. 

"He pushed her out of a window," Bruce replied. "That's how she died."

Gordon's throat bobbed, "I didn't know. None of us knew."

"I don't believe you," Bruce snarled. "Now," he said, aware of the blood dripping from his hand and Catherine's petty whimpers, "where is her body?"

"They don't know," A gravely voice so similar to Bruce's own boomed from behind the teenager. He turned around and saw his clone, the murderer, standing primly in the doorway with his hands casually in his pockets. Bruce stepped forward to lunge and him but the clone side stepped his attack.

Bruce spat in his direction, "Fight me."

"I'm dying anyway, Bruce," The clone said, "Don't waste your time with this fight."

"Where is she?" he demanded again. 

"Truthfully?" the clone rasped, "I don't know. When I went back to see if she was still there her body was gone. She's probably in some dumpster in the city. Who knows?"

Bruce felt his rage spill over into burning hatred. The mirror of his face was hateful to him. He wondered if he would ever be able to look in a mirror again. He threw a fist at his face and the clone absorbed it. Bruce threw punch after punch and his clone did not counter any of the attacks. It was like he wasn't even trying.

"Fight back, you coward," He roared.

The clone spit blood at Bruce, "I cared about her, too."

Bruce's fist contacted with his clone's cheek, "Enough to kill her?"

"I didn't mean to!" The clone's voice was desperate. It made Bruce pause. "I loved her."

Those words hurt Bruce more than any punch his clone could have made. He drew back his bloodied fists, "You didn't love her. You killed her."

"I did both."

"BRUCE!" Gordon shouted, parting the crowd of Court members to restrain Bruce's violent hand. "Enough, it's done."

Bruce shrugged him off harshly, "You killed her, too, you know. You let this maniac pretend to be me. And now she dead." Bruce turned and addressed the rest of the Court. His shouldered his resolve and said like a curse, "You think it's Gotham's judgement day but your time is running out. Ra's is sick of your silly games. Consider yourself warned."

He backhanded his clone, a petulant whim that was more for himself and his anger than for Selina, and exited the door. No one moved to stop him and he knew they never would. He was a pupil of Ra's al Ghul. The League of Assassins ran this Court and an attack on him would be an attack on Ra's. Finally, he was free of the Court.

It only took Selina's murder to get him there.

When he returned to the manor Alfred was waiting on the steps. Bruce tried to ignore him but Alfred stood in his way, "Sir?"

Bruce side stepped his warden, "They don't have her. And, no, I don't want to talk about it. It's done."

\--

Selina felt her entire body like a live wire. Something was wrong. She remembered Bruce's clone, a window and, then, the pavement. She shouldn't have survived the fall. Yet, somehow, she had and when she had woken the world was upside down. 

Her mind was a boiled mess and she only saw her life in flashes. The large parts were still in tact but details were fuzzy. She found a new squat, a smaller apartment that had been abandoned by what looked like a family with a little girl. People and families in Gotham went missing all the time. Selina never had a shortage of finding a new place to live.

But as she aimlessly walked around the pink bedroom she spotted a beautiful doll house. She could not remember ever having something so fine, so delicate.

She twitched, like she had been shocked, and then threw all of her might into destroying the dollhouse, destroying everything in sight. She would rebuild, she would take her revenge on those that had stolen her own innocence. The world would know her grief.

When she was done with the apartment the only room preserved was the bedroom. The closet was filled with leather pieces. A leather jacket, spanks, some tights. And Selina went to work ripping and sowing together a Frankenstein conglomeration of a suit like she had seen Tabitha wear the few times she had gone to Sirens. She topped the look with a tattered leather jacket and crossed to the mirror. 

The reflection was new, more ragged than Selina was used to but it was still her. A fun-house version of the girl she used to be but it was still indisputably her. 

Her wide feline eyes looked more menacing than curious. 

She thought of Tabitha again and knew what she needed next. Knives and guns hadn't saved her the last time. Now she would innovate. She needed a new weapon that would keep her enemies at a distance so they could never get close enough to push her out of a window again. That was a hard trip and an even deadlier fall. 

Selina climbed on the fire escape of her new building and went to the Sirens.

The streets were wet from rain and filled with the cries of the victims of Gotham's scum. Selina paid them no mind. She would not be the person that protected the innocent, she would leave altruistic endeavors to people like Bruce. 

Bruce. She prayed a silent prayer for him, hoping he was indeed safe. The clone's kidnappers had taken him. He was in their clutches now. Dead? She hoped not. But he was definitely not safe. 

When Selina arrived at the Siren's Club she slipped into the back room and searched for Tabitha. Wherever Tabitha was, her whip would be with her.

She spotted the mane of black hair and took quiet steps behind her, but Tabitha Galivan was prepared. She turned and appraised her wouuld-be attacker. Selina cursed. 

"Sneaking up on me, Kitty Cat?"

"Keeping you on your toes more like, Tabitha," Selina quipped. 

"Haven't seen you around."

"I took a trip, recently."

"With your boyfriend? That Wayne kid?"

Selina shook her head, "That's done."

"Shame," Tabitha purred. Selina liked the sound, "He was a real good mark."

There was a flash, a memory, that struck Selina suddenly. She remembered the night Bruce had gone all out for their first date. She had blown him off until dinner was nearly over and then felt a sudden need to see him, to not screw this all up. 

They had cake and Selina had gotten a bit of chocolate on her lips. She remembered Bruce leaning over and brushing his lips gently over hers to kiss away the chocolate. It was soft and steady. His smile after was shy and she remembered her heart fluttering dangerously fond. 

Once he had been a mark and then they kept things honest between one another and then he was more. How had he wormed his way under her skin? And the better question was why?

Selina shook off her uncertain and said blankly to Tabitha, "Your whip. Teach me."

Tabitha raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow, "Why would I do that?"

"Because," Selina said, quelling her urge to twitch. She had come back from the other side but not exactly the same as she had been before. "I never want to let a man hurt me again."

The older woman's jaw clicked, "That Wayne kid?"

The clone might have worn Bruce's face but he was no Bruce Wayne. She shook her head, "No. Not him. He would never."

Tabitha unlatched her whip from her hip and threw it at Selina, "Let's get to work."

\--

As the months crept by Selina Kyle remained dead. Tabitha had promised her young ward that if she was looking to seem dead she wouldn't throw her under the bus. Girls had to stick together, she said. Selina noticed how she looked after Barbara longingly whenever she spoke about women supporting each other. 

Those looks made her think of Bruce. 

She ignored every mention of his name on the news. Apparently, he had become quite the playboy as of late. Selina's absence did not seem to bother him as much as she had hoped it had. In the comfort of her bed at night she hoped the Bruce on television was the clone and not her Bruce. The idea of her Bruce leaving her behind was too hurtful. 

The Cat, as Tabitha affectionately called Selina's new person, made herself useful to the Siren club. She clad in her new leather suit and whip ran around the city cleaning up their dirty messes and making a few messes of her own. Whatever the club needed Selina made sure she took care of it. 

In return the club gave her a purpose that she had seemed to lose in that long fall down to the pavement all those months ago.

But the Cat was not the only person mucking up Gotham's streets now. A man in black with a fondness for bats was running around making a fool of himself. For justice or something, she never really paid attention to what the newscasters had to say about this caped crusader. 

What she did know about him was that he made getting business done for the Sirens more and more difficult.

Barbara hated him. 

Selina was sitting on the bar, playing aimlessly with her whip when the Bat had returned some of Barbara's stolen goods that she had been hiding at the dock. The blonde threw a bottle at one of their henchman and screamed. It sounded more like a release than an exclamation.

"I have not," she lamented to Tabitha, "Worked this hard to lose it all because of some weird guy in a bat mask. I want him dead."

Tabitha kissed Barbara's head, "He's a poser. Obviously a fanboy of my brother and Azrael. It'll pass."

"And how much inventory will we lose until then?"

Selina chuckled. Barbara snapped off in her direction, "Something funny?"

"Obviously," Selina said point blank. "He's not a poser. If you've spent any time watching the footage of him on T.V. he's a skilled fighter. Trained. This isn't gonna pass. Not for a while, at least."

The two older women blinked at her.

Selina shrugged, "I pay attention to details."

Tabitha addressed Barbara, "So send Miss Attention-to-Detail out for some recon."

"Recon?" Barbara howled, "We aren't an undercover FBI agent in a 1950's movie, Taby."

"I'll do it," Selina interrupted. Barbara opened her mouth to argue, "You know I won't get caught. I'm quiet."

"He's a lunatic, Selina. What kind of person dressed up like a bat and fights crime? It's insane." Barbara reasoned.

Selina smiled, "You're measuring people's insanity now?"

"Fine," Barbara barked, "Go. But don't think that I'm sending anyone out to save you if shit goes sideways."

Selina smirked and hopped off the counter, "Don't worry. I'll be fine."

Unsurprisingly, a man in a bat suit was not hard to fine. Wherever this bat seemed to go, cops and lights and fanfare seemed to follow. All Selina had to do was follow the bread crumbs and there he would be.

She followed him for a few nights, watching and learning all of his ticks. He was all brutal force and he fought fair. Fighting fair wasn't going to get him very far, Selina mused. This was Gotham and the boy scout routine wouldn't fit in here forever.

After a few days, Selina felt like she knew him. His patterns and fighting style. But she could not shake the familiar feeling of his gravitas. But she quickly banished any thoughts of familiarity. Where would she have met a bat wearing lunatic? She didn't run in those kinds of circles. Petty thievery and crime appealed to her much more than any savior complex this man had adopted.

And so, she plotted to make her move.

She cornered him on a Wednesday night. He was down near the opera house beating up a few minor thugs that were trying to steal some woman's pearls. He punched with a vigor that Selina did not understand. Jewelry was just jewelry after all. 

The Cat perched on a fire escape curiously and watched the entire exchange. A fierce kick here, a wild punch there. Each and every throw was more and more violent until the two henchman were laying bloodied face first on the pavement. This bat man character checked on the woman, to make sure she was alright, and dismissed her into the night.

That was when Selina dropped in. Literally.

She landed deftly on her feet and appraised his figure behind a mask of her own. She figured they might as well match. "Hello." The bat spun around and stared at her with dark eyes. His stupid cape flapped behind him. She rolled her eyes. "Nice night."

"Who are you?" His voice was distorted by the mask. It sounded more like a computer than a man. Selina thought that was poetic because he seemed to be more machine than man, this caped crusader, this Batman. 

"Cat," she said simply. He flinched at her nickname. She wondered if he had known a Cat before, a Catherine or some variation of her name. Her mind raced with a scandalous tale of a lost lover that had scorned him. Cat loved stories. Reality was so much worse than the world she created in her head where she was free and had never been dropped out of that window and was dripping in diamonds. "And you?"

He paused before relenting, "Bat." 

She laughed, a twinkly thing, "The rhyming is a little much. Even for me." The corner of his lip quirked in amusement. She counted that as a victory. "I'm here to warn you off of stealing from Barbara Kean."

The Bat stood taller, she felt very small. "Tell Barbara Kean to stop stealing from dock 9C and then I'll think about it."

"Nobody tells Barbara what to do," Selina smirked. "Least of all some weirdo in a bat costume."

"I'm the Batman."

"You're barely eighteen, baby face."

"So?" he shot back, "You don't look much older than I am."

Selina pulled her mask off of her head. Her hair bounced free of its constraints and she smiled broadly at the ridiculous guy in the cape, "I bet I'm at least a few years older than you."

As soon as her face was free, his whole demeanor changed. He gaped at her and moved to take off his own mask. 

She stepped forward to stop him, half the fun was the mystery behind this Batman, if she saw his face where would all of that curiosity go? But then, she realized, she knew that face. She knew that face better than almost anyone. It was Bruce.

He looked older in the almost year she had been apart from him. She had seen him on the television in the last few months but he was even more distinguished looking in person. He had gone from a boy to a man.

\--

Bruce felt the smallest flicker of foolish hope when he heard the girl in leather call herself Cat. He dampened that hope immediately. Selina was dead. She had been pushed out of a window and left this world too soon. He had never gotten the chance to tell that Cat, to project on this new Cat wasn't fair to his heart. He couldn't wish her alive.

Yet, when she pulled off her mask Bruce's heart stalled. She was here in the flesh. She had not been taken from this world and ravaged by the pavement. She was close enough to touch and talk to and she was alive. He could have sobbed with relief. 

She looked as surprised as he was to see him standing there. They were alive and together once more. The past be damned. He wouldn't lose her again. "My clone said he killed you."

Selina blinked rapidly, almost a tick, and whispered, "He did. Pushed me out of a window."

Bruce felt hot anger pool in him again. A rage that he had focused into this new man, this Batman, was threatening to boil over and torch all of his enemies. "How?" He was desperate, "How are you alive?"

"I don't know," Selina crossed her arms. "I was dead and then I wasn't. I can't explain it. The cats?"

"The cats," Bruce repeated, dumbfounded.

"They brought me back, which I know," she added hastily, "sounds ridiculous but they did."

He shook his head, "I don't care if its ridiculous. I'm just so, so glad you're here. You're alive. I've spent the last year thinking you were dead, Selina. Do you have any idea what that's like?" Because it had been hell. He had been so thankful to have the League and the Court to worry about to distract his racing mind. To think about Selina was the most painful thing the last few months.

Bruce always imagined how she looked laid out on the ground, all of the life from her stripped. It haunted his nightmares and followed him around like a shadow during the day. He never really escaped her death. It was always there. 

But now she was alive and here and breathing and speaking to him and looking so lovely he could have dropped to his knees and prayed to whatever god deemed to save her life. 

Selina crossed her arms, annoyed with him, "Do I have any idea what its like? Bruce, I'm the one that actually died. Do you know what dying feels like? It hurts. It feels like fire and then all that's left is darkness."

"I didn't mean," he tried to reason with her.

"Don't," she pulled her mask back on, effectively shutting him out, "Stay away from Barbara's shipment. She'll kill you."

Bruce yanked his own mask over his eyes, shadowing her. "Selina, please, I thought you were dead."

"Selina is dead," her voice was cold. "She was pushed out of a window. I'm Cat now. Just Cat."

"No," Bruce pleaded, reaching for her hand, "Please don't say that."

"You can't have Selina. You're going to have to settle for Cat." Her voice broke, "I'm sorry."

And then she was gone. She slipped back into shadows as if she had never existed at all.

Bruce felt his chest constrict. For months he had known only one truth: her death. But he should've known to count on her. Selina, perfect and wonderful Selina, was not the kind of girl that was knocked down and stayed down. He should've known something as trivial as death would not have kept her from this world. 

Maybe she was right, the Selina he knew was gone. But the Bruce she had known had also been wiped away, retooled by the League of Assassians to be this new creature of the night, a dark knight. 

Bruce and Selina had never been able to get it right. But maybe, just maybe, Batman and Catwoman would.


End file.
